They do. They can deduct a point for lack of engagement, and can call a fight if a fighter refuses to engage further. But in order for that to happen, you'd have to either turn your back and high-tail it across the cage, or butt scoot till the cows come home.

Running backwards is IMO the same thing. They need to make it clear when a fighter refuses to fight that it's the same thing as a tap.

**** you. **** every one of you who knocks on fighters. I don't know where people seem to get off making fun of guys who are agreeing to put their asses on the line in a cage fight.

Especially when most of those same people barely even train, and if they do, it's a once or twice a week BJJ white belt affair, where they spend the first half of class trying to remember how to pass guard, then sitting on the side of the mat when they are supposed to be rolling, talking about &quot;OMG DID U SEE KALIB RUN AWAY? LOLZ&quot; when they should be getting in the mix and actually training, so that they can perhaps one day be worth the ball sweat in even an amateur fighter's groin cup. The same people who then laugh at &quot;crappy TMA&quot; schools because they train at >insert Gracie< BJJ Academy, when probably a teenage point fighting TKDer who wrestled in Jr. High could take them in a real fight.

Yeah what happened last night was funny, but there's a difference between chuckling at Nate's antics, and **** talking a fighter, saying BS like how he should be kicked out of the UFC just because he got gun-shy and began backpedaling. This isn't the first time I've seen the coddled masses of armchair experts and Partial Artist hobbyists come clamoring to take a collective piss on a fighter. It's fucking pathetic and embarrassing to call yourself a fan of the sport. Go watch baseball or something, where it's accepted etiquette to ****-talk the players from the stands.

The difference between criticism and **** talking is that criticism (whether wrong or right) emerges from people who have some clue as to what they're talking about, and **** talking resembles such sage wisdom as, "I'd just get up".

Anyone who says that Starnes somehow ruined the card or screwed them out of the value they should have received for their money wasn't watching any of the other fights or just likes to complain. You know the inherent risk in paying money for any form of entertainment, especially something as open ended as fight sport.

All that being said, there is no legitimate reason for what he did what so ever.

Yeah what happened last night was funny, but there's a difference between chuckling at Nate's antics, and **** talking a fighter, saying BS like how he should be kicked out of the UFC just because he got gun-shy and began backpedaling.

His fight before this was equally unimpressive. He should've gone down swinging, knowing he would be KO'ed, but allowing it to happen anyway (that's what I would do in the same situation).

I once interviewed and bullshitted with Starnes at the only event I ever reported on for Bullshido (and my interviews were lost because of a tape recording malfunction to my neverending annoyance). It was his second fight and he won in impressive fashion. I sat close to him and one of the other fighters as they made fun of all the other fighters at the event.

So, I know FIRST HAND THAT KALIB STARNES TALKS **** ABOUT FIGHTERS. So this is just some of his own medicine thrown in his face. **** Kalib Starnes, and I would say that to his face, and will if I ever meet him again.

For the umpteenth time, there is a difference between criticism, and **** talking. Hearing people at the bar call fighters "pussies" and other such insults just rubs me the wrong way.

Perhaps Starnes wasn't the best person to start this thread on, but whatever, it's here now and my point stands.

Here's an alternate take for you, Kempo, on athletes that don't perform or show no class or respect. You, as a fighter, empathize with fighters and from your point of view, a cage fight is this terrible ordeal - you understand it, you respect the work the fighters put in to get to that level and so it pisses you off when someone calls Kalib Starnes a "*****"

But all those fans . . . they're watching a guy get paid to play a sport. All that fucker has to do is work out, spar, fight, film an occasional commercial or interview, get paid. Professional atheletes are one in a million individuals, but still, they get paid to play games, and if they can't do that "right" and at a high level, I'm no more going to dole out respect to them then I would tell myself, "Hey it takes a lot of training to be a master plumber and I should give this guy respect not for what he did today but what he IS" on a day I called a plumber and he didn't bother to show up.

Kalib Starnes didn't just underperform in a way suggestive of a blatant fix, tarnishing himself and the sport, he gave his opponent the bird, protested an obvious decision, showed disrespect to his opponent's and his own coaches and corners, and made fighters look worse with grade-school name calling on live TV.

He put the work into becoming high-speed in bjj and he had my respect for that, but I guess now he thinks that means he wins by showing up, and that ain't so.

Kempo, so extrapolating from your comment, it would seem that we should not **** talk or mock ANY professionals ANYWHERE. We shouldn't **** talk politicians because we've never done politics outside of our student council. We shouldn't **** talk CEOs because we've never made a million. So who can we **** talk?

**** talking is a form of social pressure when the generalized community disapproves greatly of an individual's actions, and is trying to enforce change through it. It has absolutely nothing to do with having an understanding of that person.

Just like I'm sure Dubya is a nice guy at heart (silent internal vomit) but that's not going to stop me from **** talking about him.